It's interesting to watch attitudes towards standardized education changing in real time. There's a growing realization that, outside a few specialties like medicine, when everyone has a university degree, then noone has a university degree. It's a meaningless (and increasingly expensive) differentiator that does less and less to make you stand out from the next CV in the pile.

For many kids, university was pushed for decades as the only logical step after high school. If that's no longer the case, then shouldn't we start to reassess what we actually want kids to get out of high school? Standardized curricula/exams might be convenient for universities to filter applicants but that's not the same thing as a good education. If it's not also producing "useful" skills, then it really does start to seem like daycare for teenagers.

As an aside, this was a really well-written article.